Citation Needed. Also I would be shocked if the entire curriculum of my K-12 education, including music, movies and videos*, didn't fit in 4G — with a lot of room to spare. When you are talking primarily formatted text, a gig goes a long way.

*: Assuming all videos and movies are 640x480 or lower, there was no HD and they weren't dealing with the best film stock and projectors.

What about open source school books? That's much more needed, at least in Spain which is where I live and parents have to pay a lot for books that change every two years that treat about basic information which hasn't really changed in decades. It would be much better that teachers themselves organized and wrote open source books that they can either cheaply print or put in ebooks. Signed: edulix.

He does bring up a good point, though. Since education is (usually) a government mandated requirement, why not have certain material that's in curricula available freely online in form of e-books, which is basic & common to all K-12 levels? Maybe hosted & driven by UNESCO? That way, kids regardless of where they are can access them, so long as they have tablets, and the OLPC can become an OTPC instead, which would be a lot more achievable. Since these books could be in, amongst other things, a pdf format, any tablet should be able to read them. So make this standard, and remove a lot of the costs in education, and transfer them towards training teachers worldwide to use those as tools to enhance understanding of the students.

There are many open source textbooks. There are two problems with open source textbooks. First, these are not sold, so there are no sales people to push them, to show the quality of the content, and no reason to customize the content to meet the prejudices of the administrators and teachers using them. Second, as books are printed in smaller runs, the cost is going to go up. For a thousand page book at 5 cents a page for printing and binding, that is $50. Not expensive but not cheap.We see this in lang

These angles don't bring open source into direct competition with Microsoft, so it doesn't undermine them. (FLOSS operating systems and office suites do compete with Microsoft, so that stuff would never receive a bounty from Gates.)

On the other hand, Gates seems to have a genuine concern for education. A huge problem in education is acquiring modern tools and delivering modern tools. Education providers are a bunch of leeches, providing sub-par products at prices that would

"Why would Gates support anything that undermines Microsoft...or am I missing some angle here where M$ wins anyway?"

Yes. You are missing a lot here. First of all, Open Source doesn't mean "doesn't run on Windows". In fact it could mean, and almost certainly will mean, only works on Windows. The implementation could be an Access database application, for example. Also, the days when Microsoft has to win for Gates to win are long gone. There are many other ways for Gates to wave the right hand and do so

Yeah, his alcohol and drug addiction, history of rape and child abuse, known support for Nazi politics and unhealthy interest in Satanism are well documented. Oh, wait...no, he just made a lot of money selling software, which on slashdot is the worst crime known to humanity.

The SLC developer "documentation" was written by bozos who have absolutely no perspective outside of their enterprise clusterfuck swamp. Here's a representative example:

resource - Under the industry standard representational state transfer (REST) software architecture, this is any meaningful concept around which a user interaction can occur.

So, yeah, I get it, a resource may be, um, an argument. Yeah, a verbal argument. I mean come on, try and argue that it's not a "meaningful concept" around which "user interaction" can occur. I mean I'm a user and I can have verbal arguments, duh. Another one:

standard field - A field that is a part of a resource representation, as determined by the schema of the resource.

Dude, a standard field is a field that's defined in the schema of the resource. That's it. Stop with the wordleaks.

The documentation is from someone who can't say what they fucking mean, someone who should have had their fingers slapped with a wooden ruler in their high school writing classes until they fucking got the message. I don't care that they are enterprise geeks who have to deal with various abominations and progress meetings day in, day out. Learn how to write or shut the fuck up.

Sorry, it's this kind of bullshit contentless drivel that drives me nuts, that equally drove Feynman nuts BTW, and for a good reason. RJF hated elaborate abstract frameworks built up around trivial ideas, used for nothing else but aggrandizing the trivial ideas. It's mental masturbation, it's done by people who don't realize (or pretend so) that there are clever folk out there who see that the king is naked, that all those abstractions are built around a single piece of poo in the loo.

Say it like it is. Use common language where such works. Don't wrap things up in abstractions for the sake of abstractions. Sure, I do understand that an API is an abstraction, but you don't have to use a yet another layer of abstraction when describing stuff for crying out loud! And don't fucking make a concept-explaining document something that's split up in a thousand html pages with a couple paragraphs on each! If I'm new to that stuff, I'll want to print it out, spread it out, and work with it. How the fuck do you work with a thousand html files? Do they think they are so fucking important that anyone who wants to touch their heavenly documentation is supposed to write fucking scripts just to collate their driver into a useful form? The only thing missing in their docs is ads. It's make it just as useless as, say, eHow.

It seems like the projects aren't particularly complex, but the barrier to entry is high because documentation sucks and unless you have first hand knowledge with enterprise mental masturbation, you'll spend tons of time figuring out the trivialities that could be spelled out in a 5 page pdf (vs. their idiotic bazillion page HTML thing only available in pieces that pretty much only lack ads to make a complete serving of typical internet barf).

Never mind that their dev website [slcedu.org] is a typical contentless bullshit "socially driven" page where you can't figure what the fuck the whole thing is about. I mean, they have a freaking twitter feed there. Who the heck needs a twitter feed and pics from, apparently, Times Square, on a dev page is beyond me, but hey, when you lack real content you're free to put up junk space fill, of course.

Sorry, it's this kind of bullshit contentless drivel that drives me nuts, that equally drove Feynman nuts BTW, and for a good reason. RJF hated elaborate abstract frameworks built up around trivial ideas, used for nothing else but aggrandizing the trivial ideas.

Maybe we should just return to the good old days when people used to put their ideas in Latin to make them sound important. I mean, how much smarter does "e pluribus, unum" sound than "we're all together?" Now imagine a whole spec written out in Latin, with dative on every line. Gregorian monks could chant the windows API for years.

signum norma - Pars subsidium Signum imagine determinatae de schematis m.standard field - A field that is a part of a resource representation, as determined by the schema of the resource.

Disclaimer: I demonstrably have no clue about Latin, I have pieced it together from google translations. It actually sounds better in broken Latin. Perhaps their documentation is translated from Latin?!

It seems like the projects aren't particularly complex, but the barrier to entry is high because documentation sucks and unless you have first hand knowledge with enterprise mental masturbation, you'll spend tons of time figuring out the trivialities that could be spelled out in a 5 page pdf

When the government does this, it is because they have already chosen a vendor, and they have designed the requirements to favor the vendor. First they write out the basic unobfuscated points, which they share with the vendor in a closed meeting. Then they write the obfuscated document and distribute it. Then they "select" their pre-chosen vendor on the basis that they are best-equipped to meet the bullshit requirements.

I have dealt enough with enterprisey bullshit that their whole approach is entirely transparent to me after spending maybe 15 minutes gritting my teeth while reading the site, but it drives me nuts. There's nothing to it, pretty much. What is more important, though, is that the barrier to entry is high. I wasn't the most incompetent developer say 10-15 years ago, yet I'd have never managed to go through their "documentation" and figure out what the heck. They are actively discouraging people from participat

You should. Because what they are asking for is for you to design the use cases, wireframes, features, and functions.

Given access to a working install, and a 2-hour meeting, I could probably do this inside a week plus the API learning curve. But that's not what they want. They want you to assume requirements, design around those requirements, and present your work and hope it gets selected.

If you are selected, they will then use the stack of proposals to alter your proposal, since you

The Course resource [slcedu.org] looks like an amateur listing everything they could think of, and they still got it wrong. Look at "minimumAvailableCredit" and "maximumAvailableCredit". First, this is just bad data design: either lookup the min/max on the data tables, or if these are proscriptive then there's no way to deal with changes in regulations over time. Second, academic credits vary by many factors (like classroom hours, enrollment types like auditing, etc...) and it'll be meaningless to say the minimum is zer

The richest man alive and a prestigious university offer to pay development costs a single educational software package, while N parties develop each their own, and he gets to choose who is the best, ie who he'd like to sponsor. GATES THE ORPHAN SAVER! -_-

"Minimum Application Requirements.. Applications must leverage SLC technologies [slcedu.org]. Full developer documentation can be found at dev.slcedu.org"

"Last week a subset of the SLC dev team headed north from OSCON to Seattle to host an SLC Camp for about 100 people at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Our goal was to give members of the team there a chance to ramp on the SLC technologies [slcedu.org] and their implications for K-12 education"

Not read it, but the Windows part makes sense even ignoring Gate's connection to the company. Linux may be a serious contender for servers, but it's still a niche player in desktop, and very nearly every school in the world runs Windows desktops. The only way this would work as a linux program would be if it was a web-app, or something that could be turned into a convenient server appliance.

1) whats the point in developing Open Source software for use in education if the framework/operating system on which it runs is not also open source.2) taxpayers money - open source seems like a great way to save money and avoid costly licence / subscriptions - but if apps are tied to a Windows licence - thats hardly the optimal situation3) what apps are required to devlop the software and are they free and open source or

1) whats the point in developing Open Source software for use in education if the framework/operating system on which it runs is not also open source.

Because one precludes the other. The schools already have a suite of closed source programs that run on windows. If you replace windows with linux or bsd, then you have to replace every other application that they currently depend on as well.

Whats the point of developing OSS for use in education if the OS requirement precludes any chance of its adoption?

2) taxpayers money - open source seems like a great way to save money and avoid costly licence / subscriptions

..and Obamacare seemed like a great way to reduce the cost of healthcare..

4) Is it appropriate for a charity to tie students or schools into a specific environment that could benefit a non-charity organisation in the future

1) whats the point in developing Open Source software for use in education if the framework/operating system on which it runs is not also open source.

The thing that Stallman and his followers usually miss the importance of: incremental deployment. If you replace all of your proprietary Windows applications with open source ones, then it's usually relatively easy to then replace Windows with a free operating system. Windows and Linux/*BSD/Whatever then all run all of the applications you want, but Windows is more expensive, so the choice is easy.

There is no reason a properly deployed Linux Terminal Server Project type system could not be placed in every public, tax-payer-funded school. There is no reason to use Microsoft Windows in an academic environment unless it is for job-training. While the origins of public education was to produce a workforce capable of following instructions and to train the students to follow a schedule. These days public education should be producing enlightened students instead of factory workers. But I digress. With cen

Did you notice that it requires the Apache 2.0 license? To me that means the goal is more software that they can copy without more than acknowledging...and even that not even visibly (except, possibly, at installation).

OTOH, I do consider it possible that I don't understand the Apache 2.0 license. It *is* compatible with GPL3.0, though. So if you can get the source, you can use it. But I suspect you can't get the source to the libraries that you need to build on. (I wasn't interested enough to push thi

"Software components of the SLC technology will be made available under an Apache 2.0 permissive open source license, except to the extent that releasing code puts privacy and security of student data at risk.. Applications developed by third parties that are interoperable with but separate from the SLC technology will not be subject to the SLC open source license". link [slcedu.org]

No we don't. That is a piddly amount of money compared to what Gates made while stifling innovation through unfair business practices. And now he's not even paying someone to write the software. He's paying for an award - in other words, a competition, where many people will put in much work and in the end only one or two get paid. Can you imagine asking ten people to build a house to your specifications and then buying only the one you like best? No? Then why is it acceptable to have production software developed that way?

That is a piddly amount of money compared to what Gates made while stifling innovation through unfair business practices

In case anybody thinks that this is a case of sour grapes and that the charity is the important bit, you can think of this as a variation on the broken window fallacy. Sure, Gates is donating to charity, but to obtain the money to do so, he used business practices which set the industry back several years. Overall, it's a net loss to society.

In case anybody thinks that this is a case of sour grapes and that the charity is the important bit, you can think of this as a variation on the broken window fallacy. Sure, Gates is donating to charity, but to obtain the money to do so, he used business practices which set the industry back several years. Overall, it's a net loss to society.

The big flaw in this argument is that he could just as easily have spent his money on exclusive cars, bling, hookers, and donations to moronic lobby groups. There are plenty of rich people that have made this choice.

Instead Bill Gates is doing his sincere best to spend his time and money on doing good for world society, and he now has a long history in this. Moreover, he does a lot more than just write a cheque now and then, he is deeply involved in many of these projects. I think he deserves a lot more p

The big flaw in this argument is that he could just as easily have spent his money on exclusive cars, bling, hookers, and donations to moronic lobby groups.

If you think that's a flaw in this argument, I suspect you misunderstood it. The fact that he spent the money on charity when he didn't have to does not erase the harm he did to obtain that money. No matter what he spends the money on, it's a net loss to society.

Has he done more evil than good? Personally I prefer not do get into karma bookkeepin

Sure, Gates is donating to charity, but to obtain the money to do so, he used business practices which set the industry back several years

He made computing affordable for the masses, which is why the geek snobs on slashdot hate him. Faced with a choice between using windows on a generic PC or spending five times that on some cool UNIX workstation, the market broadly decided to go for the former.

That's a ridiculous thing to say. Just because Microsoft locked up the low-end market it doesn't follow that Microsoft were necessary for the low-end market to exist. In fact the opposite is true - there were other low-end competitors that were made artificially more expensive by Microsoft due to their abusive relationships with OEMs (whereby the OEMs had to pay Microsoft even for computers that had competing operating systems installed).

You are showing your ignorance quite strongly here Mr. 2736913. You clearly don't know the history at all, and the corruption is far too detailed and pervasive to cover in a Slashdot post. It is especially showing that you cannot even get the details of the one morsel of the behavior of which you have heard. The one thing you can be 100% certain of is that if Gates is involved, there is something in it for him.
Here is one of the ways the effort should not be seen as philanthropic [slashdot.org], from this blog [wordpress.com]...

"However, just having the source code and standards for the technology won’t get you too far. The real work (and the real money) is in the process of making sure the system can connect to all the state’s various data sources, and is customized to meet the particular requirements of each state, a process known as integration. This part will not be done for free. On top of that, the deployment of the SLC system will generate consulting fees, training, ongoing customization, add-on features, and other needs known as professional services. Wireless Generation’s $8 million data-coaching contract with Delaware is just a small example."

Wouldn't a guy with a net worth of 66 Billion dollars offer more than $150,000 to help this effort if he was serious about philanthropy? Wouldn't he also guarantee that the cost of deployment of the system would be covered, rather than picked up by the taxpayers.

This is all standard Gates tactics, as old as the hills. The reason why he has 66 billion is because he has made a history of drug dealer tactics involving tricking people into thinking they are getting something great for free and then keeping them hooked on his garbage. And make no mistake about it, what was produced under his watch was quite intentionally, garbage.

>The reason why he has 66 billion is because he has made a history of drug dealer tactics involving tricking people into thinking they are getting something great for free and then keeping them hooked on his garbage. And make no mistake about it, what was produced under his watch was quite intentionally, garbage.

Stop with the lame revisionist crap. Windows 95 was way better than the competition at the, so was Office.

No. You stop the revisionist crap. What competition? There was no competition, due to anti-compete behavior on Gates' part. Go ahead. Name the competition. I can't wait.... (and don't be a moron and say Apple, which is, and was especially at the time, a hardware company)

How does Apple being a hardware company negate it? People go to Best Buy or Amazon to buy a laptop, not to pick up a shrink wrapped OS disc, and that's where the real sales numbers are at. You're the moron here.

You are so phenomenally clueless it isn't even worth the effort to respond to each ridiculous statement individually. I'll just give an as an example the fact that you cited a Window Manager for Unix as a "competitor" against an entire Operating System for a completely different hardware architecture that costs orders of magnitudes less.

"Though I am sure you'll find some nonsense revisionist reason to blame MS for CDE sucking, instead of blaming the actual companies and people who developed it."

"The fact that there was no good competitor says more about the anti-competition by Microsoft than it says about anybody else"

FTFY

"Is that the same actual brain that makes you assert that Apple was and is not a competitor to Microsoft because they sell hardware?"

You are very young Mr. 1487801. You clearly weren't around during the 80s and 90s, and definately have no understanding of the market at the time. That being said. Yes. I'm one of those weird guys who doesn't think that car manufacturers are in

Does that mean Apple had no competition too? Then why did it almost die? What alternatives to Apple machines did people buy? Or did would-be Apple customers all turn into Luddites and stopped buying computers?

You are the one who cannot comprehend what was written. I'll slow it down for you. You said it almost died. I then said it didn't die. Now show me how my pointing out that while it went through tough times it didn't die represents a lack of comprehension. Seriously, I cannot argue with you anymore. I feel like I'm picking on a mentally retarded person.

You failed to explain why Apple *almost* died when it didn't have any competition, and you then implied that 'but Apple didn't die' is a valid rebuttal to me asking you what almost killed Apple. That shows your lack of reading comprehension. Again, what almost killed Apple if not Windows?

Try telling any decent tech folks you meet that Apple does not compete with Microsoft Windows because it makes hardware. Then watch as they laugh out loud and talk behind your back about your mental retardation.

I also failed to explain quantum physics to you. You don't have the understanding of history required to even figure out that you cannot compare Apple today to Apple circa 1988, never mind the basic logic to follow any explanation. The short bus is waiting for you. Off you go...

You're pathetic, treally. No one wanted to compare Apple then and now, the question was "Was and is Apple a competitor/rival to Microsoft Windows then and now". And your retarded answer was no, and then you try to work around that bs with nonsense rationalizations and personal attacks. People's choices while wanting to buy computers for the past 25 years is not quantum physics You still cannot answer my question "What almost killed Apple? Was it not Microsoft?".

Get this through your thick head. Microsoft and Apple are not now, nor have they ever been, in competition. Apple is a hardware company. Microsoft is a software company. People who bought Apple hardware were primarily in the Desktop Publishing industry... a domain where Microsoft didn't even have a software product. Apple has since expanded their hardware line. They don't make a gaming console, which is the only arena in which Microsoft has a hardware product. Microsoft doesn't make a smartphone. Th

Thanks for a better response, though I don't agree completely with you. Apple painted itself into the DTP corner neither by design and nor by choice. They just couldn't deal with the tsunami of IBM-PC clones from Compaq, Dell, HP etc. that MS very cunningly licensed DOS/Windows to. Apple's computers were general purpose computers able to run any applications, but they failed to attract developers like MS was able to and the prices kept it within the reach of only graphic designers and not the general publi

Though I am sure you'll find some nonsense revisionist reason to blame MS for CDE sucking

Um, no. CDE sucked yes, and no it wasn't MS fault. But CDE wasn't ever competition for Windows. It ran on the old proprietary Unices on custom hardware and was never in the running to be a consumer OS running on off-the-shelf x86 hardware. OS/2 was, though, and it definitely didn't suck.

MS did have market forces working for it, but you totally ignore the missteps, bumbling and stumbling by the competition while MS executed well, across DOS, Windows, Office etc.

There was far more of the former than you are acknowledging. IBM did, in some ways, have its head up its ass by not recognizing the potential for the x86 market much earlier, but they were responsible for the BIOS that made

Actually, there was. OS/2 Warp, by many accounts, was superior to Win95 in every technical way. It even ran Windows software reasonably well. The major problem: it was never sold by OEMs bundled with PCs. You could buy it on the shelf and install it yourself, but most people wouldn't do that. And then later, the compatibility started to suffer as well, as the popular software (Office, IE) started using APIs that weren't implemented by OS/2. What OS/2 really needed was it's own software ecosystem (very simil

First of all, OS/2 was a joint project between Microsoft and IBM, meaning it doesn't qualify as a competitor to Microsoft unless you are saying Microsoft competes with themselves. Second, it illustrates my point since it was never sold bundled with PCs because it couldn't be due to anti-compete clauses with all the major manufacturers. Finally, while they may have initially been putting true effort into the project, Microsoft eventually deliberately dragged their feet in the development of OS/2 to slow IB

Sure sure, lots of cronyism to go around. Not arguing that. Just trying to say there was a technically superior product availble. Even joint-developed by MS as you point out! It failed, along with a number of other notables (WordPerfect, Novell, Netscape, Eudora), not because they were technically bad, but because of market manipulation by MS.

Excuse me? Windows 95 was demonstrably WORSE than even Windows NT, fer chrissake! The fact that Microsoft kept actively working on NT for the business market while producing that POS for the home market makes it obvious that he knew it was crap of the worst kind. And NT, don't forget, was deliberately kept hidden from their business partner (IBM) at the time until it was at least semi-ready to replace their joint project (OS/2).

If BG really wanted to produce something for the home market that wasn't crap

not going to go into details here but MS basically did a buncha stuff to lock out NOTMS from the browser market up to and including delaying Key info from Computer OEMs if they preloaded a NONMS web browser.

The worst unfair business practice was charging hardware manufacturers for a copy of Windows for every machine shipped even if it didn't actually have Windows on it. That one contract clause indirectly put human computer development back twenty years.

I'd like the school to teach how to produce open source software in Visual Studio, Visual basic & others. Also, at the higher grades, teach them about OSs and work on developing and fine tuning ReactOS (w/ a target spec of Windows 7, not beyond). That way, at the end of the day, schools would ideally be able to write and maintain not just their own software, but own OS as well, fine tuning it to whatever computers they have, while being able to use all the Windows software already out there.

If u want "depopulation" u can start with yourself. Supports GMOs but won't eat it himself.

How are GMO's related to depopulation? GMO's are designed to increase the effective food output of our land, which is a requirement for continued population growth. Maybe you're thinking about the sterility gene that Monsanto patented, but this is designed to be used by the plants and you've never inherited a gene from food so their attempts at patent protection don't impact you're ability to compete with the Dougars.

No they are not. GMOs are designed to make money to the corporation selling them. If it happens that a GMO crop has higher yields, it's just a nice side benefit. One common trait of GMO crops are that they are immune to certain poisons (herbicides and insecticide) sold by the same corporation. Thus, the farmers can use more poison on their fields without killing their crops. This may increase crop yields, but it also has a nasty side effect. Even though the corporation claims that the poison will never be a

No they are not. GMOs are designed to make money to the corporation selling them. If it happens that a GMO crop has higher yields, it's just a nice side benefit. One common trait of GMO crops are that they are immune to certain poisons (herbicides and insecticide) sold by the same corporation. Thus, the farmers can use more poison on their fields without killing their crops. This may increase crop yields, but it also has a nasty side effect. Even though the corporation claims that the poison will never be able to find its way into the ground water, most eventually do find their way.

Yes, they're designed to make money, we live in a Capitalistic society, everything that companies do is designed to maximize profit. Now, how do farmers make money? I think they sell stuff. I wonder what they sell and where it comes from.... oh, right, food, made in the land.

GMO crops cost more to the farmers due to R&D and them not legally being able to reuse many of the seeds, and not only that, but their value is about half of that for the organics at stores. You'd think that there is some way that f

Yes, they're designed to make money, we live in a Capitalistic society, everything that companies do is designed to maximize profit.

Bullshit, most people lived in some version of a mixed economy, and not everything is done by for-profit organisations. There is no inherent reason why you couldn't nationalise all farms and food producers.

are GMO's related to depopulation? GMO's are designed to increase the effective food output of our land

They don't do that, though. They may have done it over a very short time, but in the long run they actually decrease food output. Issue the first, superbugs. Insects are already becoming resistant to BT. This happened slower before, when plants produced less of it. Issue the second, destruction of topsoil. When you use synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, etc. you kill biologicals in the soil without which you cannot have healthy plant development, because those organisms which make nutrients available to the

GMOs are linked to diseases and cancer. Google France GMO recent news. Best way to kill people(depopulation) is through the food, water, vaccines, and pharmaceutical drugs. I don't want the kool-aid Jim Jones.

Oh, I get it... All those technologies invented over the last century. Vaccines, genetically modified crops, artificial fertilizer, fluorine, and medical drugs... these have all been apart of science's greatest failure of reducing the world's population.

Maybe this is why we keep that last bit of smallpox, so that we can refine it's lethality and finally scientists will kill off humanity.

It's good thing you're AC, otherwise the government might be able to track you down.

Or he could have - you know - just hired qualified people to design and implement a decent system. You clearly have no understanding of what is really going on here, or how it is simply a way for Gates and his buddies to make bank. Do some actual research, and you will see that this is no act of philanthropy. Your first clue that it wasn't an act of philanthropy should have been that it involved and had the endorsement of Bill Gates.